EUROCALL 2013 María Sánchez Tornel & Pascual Pérez-Paredes

1. Pascual Pérez-Paredes
María Sánchez Tornel
Universidad de Murcia, Spain
CorpusCALL: Using pedagogic corpora in ELT
EUROCALL 2013 - University of Évora, Portugal
20 years of EUROCALL:
Learning from the Past, Looking to the Future

2. Using pedagogic corpora in ELT
EuroCALL Conference, 2013
1. The potential of language corpora in ELT
2. Introducing pedagogic corpora
3. Annotating pedagogy
4. Functions of the pedagogic search tool in SACODEYL & BACKBONE
5. Using the search tool for language learning: Integrating activities in
ELT (Secondary Ed. & CLIL)
6. An overview of the tools to create your own corpora (corpus
compilation, annotation and pedagogical enrichment)
7. Questions and feedback

3. 1. The potential of language corpora in ELT
Using pedagogic corpora in ELT
EuroCALL Conference, 2013

4. DDL = data-driven learning, i.e.
learning driven by data
Data
Attested uses of language
recorded in real
communicative contexts
Stored in language
corpora and accessed
mainly through
concordancers

5. From a pedagogic perspective:
New learning paradigms → 21st C learning or lifelong learning
New roles &
attitudes
STUDENTS
detectives
researchers
active
responsible
TEACHERS
guides
facilitators

6. From a language learning-oriented
perspective:
Versatility &
learning
potential
AUTHENTIC 4 SKILLS AWARENESS
RAISING

7. The impact of DDL
Despite its potential benefits:
&
Marginal impact in
mainstream language
teaching
Limited to higher
education settings

8. WHY???
- Direct transfer of CL research methods to the classroom
- Scant knowledge of Applied Corpus Linguistics
- Lack of user-friendly DDL software
- DDL seen as DANGEROUS (Boulton, 2009)
Teachers are no longer the only owners of knowledge
Challenge to traditional teaching practices

9. 0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
Tertiary education Non-tertiary education
67
9
CONTEXT
Number of empirical studies (1991-2010)
Source: Boulton (2010)
Scant scholarly attention in non-tertiary settings

10. CAUTION!

11. Different contexts different students with
different objectives, abilities and needs

12. Advanced
corpus users
Research
purposes
Translation
L2 learning
at
university

13. Novice
corpus
users
L2 learning
at high
school
CLIL

14. 2. Introducing pedagogic corpora
Using pedagogic corpora in ELT
EuroCALL Conference, 2013

15. 1. Scant attention
2. Learners’ profile
3. Lack of resources
PEDAGOGIC
CORPORA

16. An alternative to the direct transfer of CL
research-oriented tools and methods is
needed
INNOVATION
&
Compilation of
pedagogically relevant
language data
Development of
pedagogic corpus tools
PEDAGOGIC
MEDIATION

17. Why
pedagogic?

18. Photo: Kordite, Flickr

19. Homogeneous and systematic
Thematic relevance
Recontextualisation  Authentication
Easy to use query tools and search options
Braun (2006)

20. Design Principles
Genuine materials, but…
• small, homogeneous corpora
• pedagogically relevant genres
• multi-modal approach (videos, audios)
• exploitation of the transcripts from different
angles (full texts, sections, concordances)
Data-based learning, but…
• pedagogical annotation and selection
• enrichment of the corpora (learning
materials, web resources)
support of the
authentication
process
communicative
and exploratory
teaching/learning
TaLC 2010, Brno, © 2010 J. Widmann/M. Sánchez-Tornel

21. EU-UMU Initiatives
• 2005 – 2008
• Video interviews in 7 EU languages
• Teen talk
• Corpus compilation & exploitation
tools
• Learning materials
• Corpora & tools freely available
www.um.es/sacodeyl
• 2009 – 2011
• Video interviews in 6 EU languages
+ English as lingua franca
• Adult speech – professional fields
• Corpus compilation & exploitation
tools
• Learning materials
• Corpora & tools freely available
www.uni-tuebingen.de/backbone

22. Bambrick-Santoyo (2010) → learner-centered data-driven
instruction should focus on assessment, analysis, action, and a
data-driven culture
Our approach to innovation:
-New model → from data to meaningful information
-Data in the web 2.0 era:
multimodal, searchable, exportable and transformable
- SACODEYL and BACKBONE reflect the dimensions for
educational innovation at the innovative or most innovative
levels outlined by Law et al (2011):
learning objectives
student’s role
teacher’s role
ICT use
connectedness
multiplicity of learning outcomes

23. 3. Annotating pedagogy
Using pedagogic corpora in ELT
EuroCALL Conference, 2013

24. • Pérez-Paredes & Alcaraz (2009)
For the time being, the natural corpus playground
continues to be tertiary education.
Our proposal:
XML >>CL in the language classroom.
The resulting annotated corpus can be seen as being
integrative of language data and annotated
pedagogy. The interesting aspect here is that
pedagogy can be annotated and, subsequently,
accessed by corpus users.
24

25. 25
Linguistic analysis of interest in FLT
------>
Linguistics comes first
------->
DDL materials
Concordances
and corpus
Researcher/Linguist
End user
The possibilities
Scenario
(Alcáraz and
Pérez-Paredes
2008)

26. 26
• Pedagogical analysis (and annotation)
of language corpora
------>
Pedagogy comes first
------->
Pedagogy-driven
DDL
Material
developer/Teacher/
Learner
End user
The feasibility
Scenario
(Alcáraz and
Pérez-Paredes
2008)

27. 27

28. It is certainly possible to use language corpora and CL
methodology in the language classroom.
This possibilities scenario (Alcaraz and Pérez-Paredes, 2008)
takes the research tools and methodology of the CL research
paradigm straightaway to the language classroom. In other
words, in the specific contexts of the language learning it
seemed appropriate to do so. However, other considerations
affecting pedagogic issues were simply neglected. The
methodological transfer from the CL research area to the
applied ring of language learning and teacher underwent no
adaptation, and thus learners were presented with the same
tools, corpora and analytical tasks as well-trained and
professional linguists.
Pérez-Paredes, P. (2010). Corpus Linguistics and Language Education
in Perspective: Appropriation and the Possibilities Scenario. In T. Harris
& M. Moreno Jaén (Eds.), Corpus Linguistics in Language Teaching (pp.
53-73). Peter Lang.

29. 29
• What is BACKBONE/ SACODEYL Annotator?
• How can I install BACKBONE/ SACODEYL
Annotator?
• Overview
– Corpus Management
– Category Management
– Annotation Management
– Metadata Management

30. 30
What is SACODEYL Annotator?
• SACODEYL Annotator …
• Is a free and open source tool for annotating texts
• Has been developed from the pedagogical perspective
(not morpho-sintactic tagging oriented)
• Offers support for pedagogical annotation in texts
• Supports the customization of the annotated tags
according to the necessities of the teacher.

31. 31
Annotation Aim
• Why are you annotating?
• What is the purpose of your annotation?
• What use are you giving to your annotation?
We assume you are annotating a text for your
own students’ language learning
purposes

32. 32
What is the output of SACODEYL Annotator?
• A corpus stored in XML TEI format that
contains:
– Texts (one text in our case)
– Annotations over the text
– The category tree (shared by all the texts)
– Resources linked to the texts
– Metadata associated to texts

33. 33
What is XML TEI format?
– TEI  Text Encoding Initiative
– This is a format for storing corpora
– Has been promoted by OTA
(Oxford Text Archive)
– Is a continuously growing format (more than 50
versions released yet, currently TEI P5)
– Is rapidly spreading among the available tools

34. 34
TEI Tools (Research)
• TeiPublisher
“This tool is a XML-based repository that
allows the publication of TEI corpora to the
public community and offers a search tool.”
• Dexter
“This is other annotator tool that used TEI as
the format for the annotated files.”

35. 35
TEI Tools (Research)
• Oxygen XML Editor and XMLSpy
“These are XML Editors that allows the modification
of the TEI files without any limitation”
(These are complex for non-advanced users)

36. 36
TEI Tools (Research)
• TAPoR (http://portal.tapor.ca/)
“The Text Analysis Portal for Research
(TAPoR) is a gateway to tools for sophisticated
analysis and retrieval, along with representative
texts for experimentation.”

37. 37
TEI Tools (Research)
• WordHoard http://wordhoard.northwestern.edu/userman/index.html
“Is a tool for annotating or tagging texts by
morphological, lexical, prosodic, and narratological
criteria and for determining frequency information”

38. 38
TEI Tools (Research)
• XAIRA
XAIRA (XML Aware Information Retrieval
Architecture) is an open source tool for
constructing high-quality linguistically-
motivated search interfaces to large
collections of XML documents.

39. 39
• The XAIRA search with our SACODEYL corpus!!!!

40. 40
Discussion and debate
• Pedagogical annotation vs. Morphological
tagging paradigm
• Learner-centered vs. Researcher-oriented
• Indirect applications of language corpora vs.
Direct applications
• Constraints of traditional CL in the language
classroom

41. 41
Discussion and debate
• Cognitive demands of traditional CL in the language
classroom: learner as a reseacher and as a traveller
• Is CL an extra hassle in language classrooms?
(Mauranen 2004)
• Customization of language corpus/collection of texts
• Mediation role of corpus-based resources in the FLT
classroom
• Authenticity issues (Widdowson)

42. 4. Functions of the pedagogic search tool in
SACODEYL & BACKBONE
Using pedagogic corpora in ELT
EuroCALL Conference, 2013

43. The main learning space
Access to corpora + learning materials
Four search modes:
- Browse
- Section search
- Concordances
-Co-occurrences
Wordlists

44. The browse mode

45. The section search mode

46. The section search mode

47. The co-occurrences search mode

48. The concordances search mode

49. The word lists view

50. Moodle integration

51. 5. Using the search tool for language learning:
Integrating activities in ELT (Secondary Ed. &
CLIL)
Using pedagogic corpora in ELT
EuroCALL Conference, 2013

52. -Learning packages
http://sacodeyl.inf.um.es/sacodeyl-
search2/faces/corpora/resources/EnglishCorpus_packages.html
-Exploratory activities
http://sacodeyl.inf.um.es/sacodeyl-
search2/faces/corpora/resources/EnglishCorpus_exploratory.html

53. 6. An overview of the tools to create your own
corpora (corpus compilation, annotation and
pedagogical enrichment)
Using pedagogic corpora in ELT
EuroCALL Conference, 2013

54. http://www.um.es/backbone/tutorials/annotator/

55. 55
What categories does
this default
category tree contain
?
Topics
Grammatical
Lexical
Style
CEF Level
….

56. 56
How can I add a new document to the
current corpus?
1. Press in …
2. Select the text
format/encoding
3. Select the new
document

57. 57
What does the text format mean?
• This is the manner in which the text is laid out in
the file.
• Mainly 3 text formats are supported:
– Plain text (written) .txt
– Oral text in SACODEYL Transcriptor format
– XML text in TEI standard format
(text in special XML files)

58. 58
This is the form in which the text is stored
(related to the Multilanguage).
(In Windows ANSI by default)
What does the text encoding mean?

59. 59
Adding our example
• Our example file is en17.txt
–This file has a SACODEYL Transcriptor
format
–Has been encoded with multilingual
support encoding format (UTF-16)
• Save the changes!!!!

60. 60
Selecting the text to work with
• Now we can insert a great amount of texts in
the same corpus.
• We can select one and annotate it.
1. Press …
2. Select the document

61. 61
Friendly Appearance
• Pedagogical orientation

62. 62
Information showed in the working document
• Section Number
• Applied Categories to this section
(Annotations)
• Speaker (only in oral text)
• Transcription

63. 63
What is a section?
• Is a stretch of text that is pedagogically motivated.
• A fragment that could be useful in a classroom
• A section can be established in any kind of text (oral
and written) with the insertion of the special char (#)
for division of texts into sections.

64. 64
Intuitive Annotation Process
• Drag and Drop to Annotate a Section

65. 65
Keywords
• SACODEYL Annotator supports the annotation
of keywords at any kind of level
• Just select text and apply a category by right-
clicking

66. 66
What is a Keyword?
• “… [a] keyword is a stretch of language (a
word, more than one word or a whole
paragraph) that the annotator associates to a
category…”
Pérez-Paredes and Alcaraz, ReCALL, Jan. 2009
Vol 21. (1) (Forthcoming)

67. 67
Selective View
• Offers a selective view of the information in
order to facilitate the organization.

68. 68
Annotating a Title
• Drag and Drop the special “Title”
category to the desired section.
• The title is rendered by a
tool tip when placing the cursor on
the section.
(No tool tip = No title)

69. 69
Multilanguage
• Supports a real multilingual annotation
• May use texts in any language

70. 70
Extensible
• Supports customization of
the annotation
• User can add his/her own
annotation taxonomy or
remove any annotation
category

71. 71
How can I add a new category?
– Select the parent category.
(i.e. Topics)
– Press Add Cat. Button.
– Fill the dialog

72. 72
How can I remove a category?
Select the category to remove
(i.e. Topic)
Be careful …
All the associated children will
be removed also
All the annotation with the tags
will be removed also
Press Delete Cat. Button.

73. 73
How can I reorder the categories?
Select the category to reorder
(i.e. Topic)
Press Up Cat or Down Cat. to
move it.

74. 74
How can I customize a category?
Select the category to
customize (i.e. Topic)
Press double click

75. 75
Can I manage metadata for the working text?

76. 76
What if I find mistakes?
• Supports edition of the inserted texts.
• Uses XML TEI standard for encoding corpora.

77. 77
Multilingual Interface
• Available in many languages
• You could also add your language for the
interfaces

78. 78
Integration
• SACODEYL Annotator has been integrated
with:
– SACODEYL Transcriptor
– SACODEYL Search
– SACODEYL VRP

79. 79
Resource Management
Offers enrichment
of text with
external resources
i.e. html links,
videos, audios, etc.

80. 80
Where is the information stored?
• Remember: All the information is store in one
file. The corpus file which you have created.
Corpus
Language
Data
Annotation
Language
Metadata
Pedagogy

81. Pascual Pérez-Paredes pascualf@um.es
María Sánchez Tornel mariasst@um.es
Universidad de Murcia, Spain
CorpusCALL: Using pedagogic corpora in ELT
EUROCALL 2013 - University of Évora, Portugal
20 years of EUROCALL:
Learning from the Past, Looking to the Future